Professor Henry Bedson was committed to finding out more about the deadly smallpox virus.

Professor Henry Bedson was committed to finding out more about the deadly smallpox virus.

It was 1978 and it seemed the disease and its various strains, such as white pox and monkey pox, was on the verge of extinction.

For centuries smallpox had rampaged across the world and was the curse of both the rich and poor.

Bedson, a medical researcher at Birmingham University Medical School, had been working with other specialists and he told friends he was on the brink of a major breakthrough.

The World Health Organisation wanted him to continue his research but they were not satisfied with the condition of his laboratory facilities.

The lab was due for closure and Bedson knew he would not receive any further funding so he worked more rapidly, storing more samples and increasing the likelihood of an accident.

Conditions were not as stringent as now, but researchers were still confident that the virus could not escape the confines of the lab.

However, minute particles crept into an airduct which led directly up to the room where Janet Parker worked.

The Kings Norton photographer regularly used a darkroom above the research laboratory used by Bedson.

On August 11 1978, Mrs Parker fell ill. She initially thought it was a cold, but then she developed spots and the symptoms got worse.

She was first admitted to East Birmingham (now Heartlands) Hospital, and six days later diagnosed as suffering from smallpox, even though she had been vaccinated 12 years previously.

Health officials now had a major alert on their hands and Mrs Parker was placed in isolation at the previously redundant Catherine-de-Barnes hospital in Solihull.

Bedson and his family were placed in quarantine at their family home in Harborne and 500 other people were also isolated.

When smallpox was diagnosed, Bedson was horrified. Friends said he was a broken man. He took his work very seriously and felt he had done nothing which could have resulted in the tragedy.

His home and family were besieged by camera crews and reporters and the pressure on him became unbearable.

On September 1, while his wife was taking a telephone call, the professor walked out to his garden shed and cut his throat.

He survived in hospital for five days but became the first fatality of the outbreak – killed not by the virus he battled to defeat for so long, but by the panic it caused.

In a suicide note he apologised to his family and friends for the strain he had placed them under.

It read: “I am sorry to have misplaced the trust which so many of my friends and colleagues have placed in me and my work and above all to have dragged into disrepute my wife and beloved children. I realise this act is the last sensible thing I have done but it may allow them to get some peace.”

Just four days later, Mrs Parker’s father, Fred Whitcomb, died of a heart attack. He and his wife Hilda had been placed in quarantine at the same hospital as their daughter but the strain of the ordeal had become too much for him.

The city was gripped with panic and a month after she initially fell ill, Mrs Parker lost her battle for life. She remains the last person to die from smallpox.

Former hospital domestic worker Katie Conlon, of Quinton, said her mother worked at East Birmingham Hospital when Mrs Parker was first admitted. “She never came into contact with the woman but she was vaccinated in case the virus spread. It was terrifying and a very sinister time,” said Mrs Conlon.

Birmingham University was cleared of any blame regarding the photographer’s death, but her husband Joseph received a payout of £26,500 over her death.

Catherine-de-Barnes hospital is now a luxury housing estate and many of Mrs Parker’s former neighbours in Burford Park Road have moved on.

Young families now occupy the houses next to Mrs Parker’s former home unaware of the drama that unfolded over 30 years ago.

But the awful memory of the time a city was under the shadow of the world’s biggest killer disease will never die.